More siddur progress

[rhu]

Tonight I proofread another fourteen pages, including the tricky Pesach piyyut ברח דודי. Next up is the big block of הושענות, which will be even more painful.

I also made a major breakthrough with how I'm going to integrate the musical fragments for real.

Technobabble version: The toolchain that I wrote will sorta kinda act like an OPI server. For the text, I'll print from Davkawriter to Adobe PDF, then export the PDF into individual EPS files. For the music, I will clean up my various Finale files so that each of them can be directly exported as an entire page to EPS using Finale's "Graphics Tool". My Python script will iterate over all the pages from the text, stripping any images that are embedded there, and using a separate text data file to identify which, if any, of the music EPS files need to be overlaid on each text page -- along with placement, colorization (in CMYK of course), and cropping of the music files. The output of the Python script is a huge PostScript file which can then be resubmitted to Adobe Distiller to generate the final output.

I successfully ran this script over the first page, which has a single musical example. It took two hours to get the script just right, but now I know that the approach works, and for the first time since I started this project, I feel comfortable with the results of my graphics toolchain.

Comments

[abbasegal]

Sounds great! I am really looking forward to seeing the next version!

Hey -- I noticed on Shavuot that you don't have Akadmut or the reading. This meant I had to run a grab a Rinat! Was this by design, or an oversight? (I could understand not having the Torah reading, if the analogy is that on Shabbat we need a chumash and the siddur, why not on Yom Tov as well, but Akadmut isn't in all chumashim).

I also found an incorrect page reference (or two) around Yizkor -- I don't have the siddur right in front of me so I can't double check them precisely.

While I am thinking about it, Naso was also truncated...

Hazaq ubaruch!

[rhu]

For the readings, my rule was that if it's a short reading (basically, 3 or 4 aliyot) I included it, but if it's Chag or Shabbat then you might as well go get a chumash.

I had debated what to do about Akdamut --- when this was just for me, I simply considered my Koren Machzor l'Shalosh Regalim as my chumash equivalent, and problem solved. But I can see that that doesn't work for the broader audience, so I guess I'll have to add another folio. *sigh* But I draw the line at Yetiv Pisgam.

I'll double-check Naso. Actually, I haven't proofread any of the parshiyot yet. Thanks for the pointer.

And yeah, the page numbers are all screwed up. As you and I have discussed before, it's remarkable that DavkaWriter doesn't have cross-references as a program feature, and I haven't figured out a good way to script that yet.

[abbasegal]

What version of Davkawriter are you using? does the newest version (Platinum 6) have better cross-reference handling? If not, does it have "hidden text" or some other feature you could use to write your own x-ref handler? (Though that would seem a little odd to have to do in the year 2010).

[rhu]

Platinum 6.6.1. And no hidden text either.

The other thing that sucks is I can't have a box which is linked to a paragraph but which appears at a fixed location on that paragraph's page. Which means that when I insert two pages in the middle of the book to accommodate Akdamut, I need to manually cut and paste all special boxes that I needed to make Kaddish work out from the page they're currently on to the new page.

I really wish I could have done this in a real tool.

[rhu]

OK, it was a struggle and I had to compromise some of my layout principles, but I can get Akdamut to fit on two pages. I may send you a pdf and ask for an extra pair of eyes once I've done my proofreading pass on it.